


tH3 Sh1niNG cITy 1n Th3 SeA

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Red & Green & Blue & Yellow | Pokemon Red Green Blue Yellow Versions
Genre: Horror, OC, Other, glitch city, missingno - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 17:25:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4928563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's an urban legend—the twisted city that appears after a seemingly unrelated series of events. The place made out of the pieces of many other places. Trainers whisper about the terrible things you see there. But it's only an urban legend.<br/>...isn't it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	tH3 Sh1niNG cITy 1n Th3 SeA

Zack took a breath, steadying his nerves. Beedrill vibrated slightly beside him, patiently awaiting orders.

499 steps. The pedometer's impassive face stared back at him, not daring or accusing, just telling him the plain facts.

Beedrill scraped its stinger on the ground, a restless habit. Without so much as a look, Zack recalled it. He was staring at directions that had been hastily scribbled on a legal pad. Steps one through six had been completed.

Step seven sat unchecked. The final step.

Zack sighed and creased the paper, storing it in his back pocket.

What did he have to lose? It was just an urban legend, just a chunk of myth that trainers passed back and forth like a cigarette they were afraid to light. The guy who had told it to him had been drunk off his face, practically falling off his stool. Nothing would happen. Nothing could happen.

Zack stood up, groaning at the ache in his knees and hips after sitting on the pavement too long. He stamped his feet a few times, watching the pedometer, daring it to mistakenly flick over. It didn't.

Zack took a step.

 

The lights of the southern entrance had rainbow halos. Zack cried out and stumbled, putting a hand over his eyes. The instantaneous trip had brought nausea and vertigo with it. He teetered on the spot, trying to breathe.

“Sir.”

The voice had a metallic edge, like it was coming through a tin can. Zack took some steadying breaths and cracked one eye, just barely. The blurry silhouette of a park attendant stood just to the right.

“Sir, are you done with your safari?”

Zack realized he still had the pedometer and surrendered it readily. 500 bucks and nothing but a headache to show for it. Fabulous.

“Sir?”

Zack closed his eyes again, wanting nothing more than to be left alone. Shit, did he have to pay a fine for leaving the park?

“Sir, are you all right? Do you require assistance?”

Zack managed to shake his head. He waited until he heard the footsteps of the attendant pace away from him. Then he lurched for the door, making a note to buy some shades and some dramamine.

 

Gravel crunched underfoot.

Which was wrong, first of all. The safari zone had a paved road leading up to the entrance.

Zack lifted his hand and blinked.

The nausea was abating, but this was rapidly being replaced by an overall feeling of wrongness.

The ground was patchy.

No, it was in patches.

He gaped at a chunk that looked like it had been torn out of a road, complete with traffic lines. Water glistened in squares. Trees that butted against the edge of their marked zones looked like they had been sliced cleanly to fit.

He laughed out loud. It echoed eerily in the space.

Holy hell. The twisted city really was real. Maybe he'd try to score some free rare candy next.

Zack set forth, whistling and tossing a Pokeball up and down. It was a shame he didn't have a camera. Would he be able to bring something back?

He turned and eyed a hydrant growing sideways from a car. Maybe best not.

He had to walk only a little ways before the city sprung up on him. It didn't get closer, it unfolded like a map. Now his nausea returned because it seemed to shift with every step he took. Walls oscillated between transparency and opacity. Cars hung in the air like odd fish. The road couldn't decide if it wanted to be brick or asphalt or grass or carpet or—

Zack whipped his head around, scanning the city.

It hadn't been a sound. It had been... _something_ that set him off. Not even a whole feeling, just a momentary twinge like he was suddenly somewhere he shouldn't be.

If he stayed here long enough, Zack wondered, what would become of him? Would he start oscillating like the buildings? Would parts of him turn transparent, to grass or water or something else?

Zack picked up his pace a little.

Calling the place a city was almost too kind. A city had buildings. This place had a sprawling, jittering mass that didn't start any one place and didn't finish up anywhere good.

Zack stood on top of a taxi and took a look around. He hadn't started with a specific plan of what to do when he got here, having doubted until the very last second. He had thought maybe if he could see further, maybe....but the change in height didn't help him at all. Zack did a little kick-jump off the car and landed through a wall.

He held his arms out and tried not to move.

The wall hadn't been there a second ago.

Zack took stock of himself. He didn't hurt. His legs were just speared right through what looked like a perfectly solid wall.

He took a step, expecting it to close in and hurt him at any second. It felt like nothing. It was like walking in air.

Zack laughed suddenly. It didn't echo, the jagged angles of the place twisted it into the frightened chirp of a bird. Half from giddyness and half from sheer terror, he started running.

A slab of Pokemon center flashed in front of him, he was too high on adrenaline to stop, but it let him harmlessly through.

Now half-crazy, Zack ran whooping through the city, through the unstable walls and formless windows. He ran with arms extended and both hands clenched into fists, ran because he had no idea what else to do.

He dove through the side of a building and punched the air, uttering a victory cry.

Something answered him.

Zack managed not to piss himself. He pressed a hand against the ache in his side and retreated, trying to pinpoint where the cry had come from.

That cry. Oh, that cry.

If you had taken the roars of an entire zoo of Pokemon, thrown them into a blender and then spilled the mess over the sheet music to a car crash, that would have come close to approximating the sound. It was loud. It was close.

Zack backed into a corner formed by the ticket window of a movie theatre and the wall of someone's kitchen. He tried to replay the sound in his head, imagining the path of the sound waves as it bounced from surface to surface, but the memory hurt just as much as the real thing.

Then he didn't have to wonder as the side of a building stepped away.

If he had been looking carefully, maybe he would have been able to see it. It wasn't quite camouflaged because it did not look like pieces of a building. It looked and moved like an angry scribble on the eyes. Zack had to turn his head even as he fought down panic.

The thing's cry lashed his ears again. The world gained an afterimage for a second and Zack scrubbed his forearm over his wet face.

God. _God._

His Pokedex chimed. Zack reached in his pocket, trying to navigate the fabric with numb fingers.

The screen just showed four question marks. He had an older model, it didn't speak out loud or feed him helpful tidbits about the beast in front of him. Instead the screen glitched and blinked, a confused jumble of text winding up and down the face until the thing beeped and went lifeless in his hands.

Zack looked up again at the mass.

“No way,” he said.

This thing was a Pokemon?

It came to rest in front of him, swaying.

Zack eyed it uneasily, his retinas aching, as he took a Pokeball from his pocket.

He might not catch it, but he'd settle for living.

“Go Sandslash,” he said quietly.

Sandslash flickered for a moment on the battlefield before disappearing again. The 'full' light on the Pokeball clicked on.

Zack shook it. “Hey,” he murmured.

He tried again. Sandslash appeared already cowering, trying to put as much distance between itself and the thing.

Zack tried not to drop the Pokeball with a hand already slick with sweat.

“Come on,” he shouted, “just attack it.”

Sandslash looked up. The mass was swaying back and forth. Sandslash let out a halfhearted sand attack. It buffeted against the side of the thing and then rapidly dissipated.

The thing chittered metalically. Then it did...something with its body.

Zack had never, _never_ seen an ember attack so big. He could hardly get his mouth open to scream before the flame wall hit Sandslash, sizzling the hair on his face and arms when he threw them up to protect himself.

When he peeked out again, there was a hunk of charcoal in front of him. The sidewalk was gently pinging.

Zack gaped openmouthed at the thing. If it had a face, he could have told if it were sad or mad or hungry, but it was just a mess like the rest of its body.

Zack found he was crying.

“Please,” he said hollowly, taking a step back, “please no.”

The mass was swaying. It moved forward a little.

Zack ran.

He ran through the buildings, pain in his side stabbing him and knees and ankles and hip joints screaming in agony. The thing was screaming behind him, a thousand Pokemon screaming at him in their mutilated voices. Sweat flung out from him in little droplets. He turned a corner and ran down an alleyway. He turned a corner at the end of that alleyway and ran into another alleyway. He turned a corner at the end of that alleyway and ran into another alleyway. He turned a corner at the end of that alleyway and ran into another alleyway.

He slowed to a stop and finally had to admit to himself that he was lost.

The thing was... _traveling_ to his location somehow, he could feel rhythmic booms as its(feet? hands? stumps?) limbs hit the pavement. It must weigh a ton.

He grabbed in his back pocket. The paper wasn't there.

Zack convulsed with a sudden sob as he continued to grasp behind him, as if that would make the paper appear. He couldn't remember. The man in the bar had said how to leave. He couldn't remember. Panic was making his brain scattershot. He couldn't _remember._

The thing peered around a corner. It didn't have eyes and he could still feel it looking.

His arm brushed the Pokeballs.

Wait. _Wait._

Hardly daring to breathe, Zack slipped Beedrill out. He made sure to aim for a space that wasn't a wall, just in case his powers hadn't carried over.

The Pokemon flickered.

“Come on,” he murmured gently, eyes on the shape at the end of the alley.

Beedrill flickered into being, thrumming nervously up and down.

Zack dove, locking arms around its waist.

“Fly! Fly!” he screamed.

Beedrill did not have to be told twice.

Tears commingled with snot as Zack laughed, watching the dizzy mess dwindle beneath them as Beedrill flew them up, up into the clean air.

He was still laughing when they reached Celadon city.

He laughed so hard he let go too early and fell ten feet to the pavement. He laughed, holding his broken shoulder as concerned people thronged around him. He laughed as he watched his Beedrill spiral exhaustedly out of the sky, thumping off the top of the ambulance that drove up. He was still grinning madly after the sedative took effect.

 

Zack came to in the hospital. It was dark. It was quiet. There was only the hiss of machinery and the soft glow of instrument panels.

He relaxed.

Someone had put flowers on the table beside his bed. Probably one of the nurses.

His arm was in a suspended cast. His back was in a cast. His foot was propped above the sheets, encased thigh to ankle in plaster.

And he was alive.

Zack chuckled hoarsely, which made him cough.

He was alive. And he was going to tell everyone.

The other arm felt fine, so he reached over to the table for the glass of water that waited there. And reached _through_ the table.

Zack stared at it.

“No,” he whispered.

He withdrew his hand, but the motion made him sink through the bed a little. He screamed.

A nurse suddenly appeared at the doorway. “Sir? What's the matter?”

Zack couldn't do anything but scream as he flailed for something, anything to hold onto.

The nurse dashed forward, trying to grab his arms. “Sir! You have severe injuries, please stop!”

Another nurse appeared at the door.

“Please hold him,” the first nurse gasped, “I have to fetch some sedative!”

Zack did not stop flailing, even as the nurses switched places and the first began running down the hallway.

“Help!” he cried, “sinking!”

The nurse grabbed the sedative from the dispensary and started back at a quick jog. After a few steps she slowed to a rapid walk. This became a calm, measured stroll that she used as she did her rounds. She re-entered the room.

“Doing okay?” she asked.

The other nurse looked up from making the bed.

“Yeah,” she said, “apparently someone thinks their mother lives here.”

They shared a laugh over the old joke. The nurse making the bed tucked the sheets beneath the pillow and dusted her hands.

“There,” she said, “ready for the next one.” She turned. Stopped. “What's that?” she asked, pointing.

The nurse in the doorway opened her hand. “Huh. That's funny. I must've grabbed it when I was going for the keys. I'll just put it back.”

“I'll walk with you.” the other nurse snapped off the lights as they left the empty room.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [NOTE DATA CORRUPTED]


End file.
